Case Study

All functionality in one solution from Heads and an

application platform from Starcounter.

Those are the ingredients that created IT success at

Sweden’s retail wonder Gekås. The secret weapon is

getting the performance to do real-time, for real.

Gekås Ullared.

Gekås Ullared, situated on the Swedish west
coast is a ”pretty big” shop.
Called “the Walmart of Sweden”, it even has its own
reality TV show. On a good Saturday, more than 17 000
receipts are being processed, with more than 600 000
separate rows for different articles being sold. There are 82
POS (point of sales) stations to handle this load. Gekås
article database contains more than 100 000 items, so
anyone can understand this means tough demands on the
deployed IT solutions.
Around 2010 Gekås came to a point where they realized
applications being used didn’t cut it. There were several
problems. The most obvious problem was instability, which
equals disaster in a retail environment. Closely related to
stability problems was lacking performance as well as the
need to integrate several different applications, to provide
IT solutions for the wide range of activities at Gekås. To put
it shortly, it was a mess.
configuration of web user interfaces, and more.
Zero downtime.
The purchasers work in the same applications as the
In 2008 Gekås made contact with the Swedish ISV Heads.
Subsequently, Heads started to build an application that
could handle the complete chain of activities, from
sourcing products all the way to selling them. Gekås
deployed the Heads application in 2010, and the year after
the complete chain of activities were covered.
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Case Study
Gekås Ullareds massive retail complex.
So far, the application has never been down, still with top
notch performance. For example, the latency is super low
and it’s possible to do real time analysis on transaction data.
Add to that the possibility to upgrade 400 POS clients in
four hours. The POS clients does not only include cashier’s
stations, but also price information stations and other
workstations of different kinds.
How is all this possible? There are two main reasons: Heads
application covers all the activities performed at a retail
operation like Gekås. The foundation of the application is
Starcounter’s in-memory database, which offers
unprecedented performance. The application, simply called
Heads, includes ERP, POS, inventory, sourcing, supply chain
and other logistics. On top of this there are solutions for
mobile clients, integration with other applications,
people managing incoming deliveries and the warehouse,
and as the cashiers, as well as all administrative personnel.
 Case Study

“The load isn’t even noticeable on the single

For more info visit gekas.se

Quick Facts.
server being used.”

Gekås Ullared AB is a Swedish superstore in

Ullared, Sweden, founded in 1963 by Göran
Karlsson as Ge-kås Manufaktur.

High performance and easy to use.

As an example of extreme performance Henrik Larsson It had an annual turnover of SEK 5.4 B in 2018
The use of the Starcounter Database means extreme mentions one customer running a detailed report at 100 with a total store area of over 39,000 m²
performance and unequalled stability. "We have 20 different locations simultaneously. The load isn’t even (420,000 sq ft). The store is visited annually by
customers in retail, some with many geographical noticeable on the single server being used. This is only one approximately 4.8 million customers, with the
locations, and have never experienced a service outage", example of the groundbreaking work being accomplished 2019 record of 29,200 for a single day.

says Henrik Larsson (former CEO, Heads).

at Starcounter.

In one year, 122 million items passes through

the registers. There are over 100 000 unique
The use of Starcounter Database also means that not only Different projects and products are focused on simplifying articles in the inventory.

data in itself, but also complicated analysis of the data, is IT in several, interconnected, ways. Unique solutions for
available in real-time, with “a click on a button”. This would architecture, on different levels of the technical IT stack, During the high season the inventory is
be impossible with a platform that offers lesser means better performance, shorter development times and circulated 3 times in one week. A customer
performance. The real-time capabilities give ample a lower total cost of ownership.

picks items for 15 SEK a minute.

opportunities for both business development and

monitoring of ongoing business processes.

In the end, that means better business at one of Europe’s

largest department stores.
For a retail company like Gekås the mentioned capabilities
provide the difference between being on top of activities,
and living in a state of chaos. "One, maybe less obvious,
advantage with using Starcounter is simplified
development. Our developers think it’s a pleasure working
with the Starcounter Platform. They work fast and the
development process is simple. It provides short time to
market."

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Case Study

Contact

Starcounter AB info@starcounter.com

Hovslagargatan 3
+46 (0) 8-428 425 00

111 48 Stockholm

Sweden

Starcounter.com

Starcounter.io

Heads AB
info@heads.com

Hovslagargatan 3
+46 (0) 8 410 282 00

111 48 Stockholm

Sweden

heads.com

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